The Challenge of Jewish-Zionist Power in an Era of Global Struggle
An address by Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review, delivered at an IHR meeting in New York City on July 16, 2005. (A report on the meeting is posted at http://www.ihr.org/news/071605NYIHRMeeting.html)

During World War II, Henry Luce, the publisher of Time and Life magazines, coined the term “The American Century” to refer to the twentieth century. And in the years since then the term has been used many times. In the decades since the end of World War II, the United States has indeed been the world’s foremost military, economic and financial power, and the most important cultural factor.

But that title is not the only one that’s been given to that century. A few months ago Princeton University Press issued a remarkable book by a Jewish scholar, Yuri Slezkine, that explains why the Twentieth Century is, or has been, the century of preeminent Jewish influence and power. In fact, the book is entitled The Jewish Century.

In that spirit, the prominent French Jewish writer Alain Finkielkraut was moved to write in 1998, in an essay published in the prestigious Paris daily Le Monde: “Ah, how sweet it is to be Jewish at the end of this 20th century! We are no longer History’s accused, but its darlings. The spirit of the times loves, honors, and defends us, watches over our interests; it even needs our imprimatur. Journalists draw up ruthless indict*ments against all that Europe still has in the way of Nazi collaborators or those nostalgic for the Nazi era. Churches repent, states do penance...” / 1

But that was then, and this is now. There are good reasons to believe that both American power and Jewish power have crested. The twentieth century – what has been called “the American Century” and “the Jewish century” – is passing, both literally and figuratively, into history.

Although the US is still the world’s most important military and economic factor, its relative military and economic power in the world has been declining over the past 20-30 years, and will continue to decline in the years ahead. In the Middle East, Israel is still the foremost military power in the region. It is the only state in the area with a nuclear arsenal, for example. All the same, Israel's stature in the world, and – more generally – Jewish-Zionist power, are declining from the high point of the 1980s and 1990s.

Tony Judt, another Jewish writer, put it well in an essay published last year in The Nation. He wrote: / 2

"Following the invasion of Lebanon, and with gathering inten*sity since the first intifada of the late 1980s, the public impression of Israel has steadily darkened. Today it presents a ghastly image: a place where sneering 18-year-olds with M-16s taunt helpless old men ("security measures"); where bull*dozers regularly flatten whole apartment blocks ("rooting out terrorists"); where helicopters fire rockets into residential streets ("targeted killings"); where subsidized settlers frolic in grass-fringed swimming pools, oblivious of Arab children a few meters away who fester and rot in the worst slums on the planet; and where retired generals and Cabinet ministers speak openly of bottling up the Palestinians "like drugged roaches in a bottle" (former Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eytan) and cleansing the land of its Arab cancer (former Housing Minister Effi Eitam).

" Israel is utterly dependent on the United States for money, arms and diplomatic support. One or two states share common enemies with Israel; a handful of countries buy its weapons; a few others are its de facto accomplices in ignoring inter*national treaties and secretly manufacturing nuclear weapons. But outside Washington, Israel has no friends -- at the United Nations it cannot even count on the support of America's staunchest allies. Despite the political and diplomatic in*competence of the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization]... ; despite the manifest shortcomings of the Arab world at large... ; despite Israel's own sophisticated efforts to publicize its case, the Jewish state today is widely regarded as a -- the -- lead*ing threat to world peace. After thirty-seven years of mili*tary occupation, Israel has gained nothing in security. It has lost everything in domestic civility and international re*spectability, and it has forfeited the moral high ground for*ever."

What is emerging is a new bi-polar world, with the United States and Israel on one side, and the rest of the world on the other. This new alignment of forces, this shift in power relationships in the world, is strikingly reflected in the United Nations, where, time and time again, votes on issues in both the General As*sembly and the Security Council pit the United States and Israel on one side, and virtually the entire rest of the world on the other.

On October 21, 2003, for example, there was a vote in the UN General Assembly on a resolution condemning Israel’s so-called “security barrier,” a grotesque thing, parts of it larger and more formidable than the Berlin Wall, that Israel has built on occupied Palestinian territory. Supporting the resolution were 144 countries, representing nearly the entire world’s population. Twelve countries abstained. Just four countries opposed the resolution. They were: Israel, the United States, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia. The latter two member states, small island countries in the Pacific ocean with a combined population of 180,000, are utterly dependent on the US. And on December 9, 2003, the members of the UN General Assem*bly considered a resolution re-affirming the principle of Pal*estinian sovereignty. It received the backing of 142 states, including all the nations of Europe and South America. In this case as well, just four countries voted against the resolution: Israel, the US, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia.

This reminds me of a story. A senior citizen whose brain didn’t work as well or as quickly as it once did, was driving on the freeway when his cell phone rang. He answered it, and heard his wife urgently warning him, “Charles, I just heard on the news that there's a car going the wrong way on the freeway. Please be careful!" Charles immediately replied: “Honey, it's not just one car. It's hundreds of them!"

Well, like Charles, President Bush and Israeli premier Aerial Sharon insist that everyone else is recklessly going the wrong way. And as the United States and Israel increasingly regard the rest of the world as "out of step," most of humanity views the US and Israel with mounting distrust, hostility and fear.

United States support for Israel did not come about because Americans are markedly more intelligent, humane or enlightened than, say, Norwegians, Japanese or Irish. No, the US-Israel alliance is, rather, a consequence, a result, of the Jewish-Zionist grip on American political and cultural life. Awareness of this fact is growing everyone. And along with that, ever more people understand the crucial factor behind the US invasion of Iraq was concern for Israel and its interests.

Jewish-Zionist plans to overthrow the Iraqi regime by force were already in place well before George W. Bush became president. A group – a cabal -- of high-level, pro-Israel "neoconservative" Jews in the Bush administration -- including Paul Wolfowitz, Dep*uty Secretary of Defense; Richard Perle of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board; David Wurmser in the State Department; and Douglas Feith, the Pentagon’s Undersecretary for Policy – played a decisive role in prodding the United States into war in Iraq. / 3

This is so widely understood by Washington insiders that US Senator Ernest Hollings was moved last year to declare that Iraq was invaded, as he put it, to “secure Israel,” and that “everybody” – his word -- knows it. Referring to the cowardly reluctance of his Congressional colleagues to openly acknowledge this real*ity, Hollings said that “nobody is willing to stand up and say what is going on.” With few exceptions, members of Congress uncritically support Israel and its policies due to what Hollings called, “the pressures that we get politically.” / 4

In Britain, a veteran member of the House of Commons candidly declared in May 2003 that pro-Israel Jews had taken control of America’s foreign policy, and had succeeded in pushing the US and Britain into war in Iraq. “A Jewish cabal have taken over the government in the United States and formed an unholy alliance with fundamentalist Christians,” said Tam Dalyell, a Labour party deputy known as “Father of the House” because he is the longest-serving Member of Parliament. “There is far too much Jewish influence in the United States,” he added. / 5

By supporting Israel and its policies, the United States betrays not only its own national interests, but the principles it claims to embody and defend. The truth is, that if the United States held Israel to the same standards that it has applied to Iraq, Serbia, and other countries, American bombers and missiles would be blasting Tel Aviv, and we’d be putting Israeli prime minister Sharon behind bars for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Americans have already paid a high price for the US alliance with Israel. This includes tens of billions of dollars in economic and military aid to the Jewish state, the cost of the Iraq war and occupation, now more than $200 billion, and the deaths of more than fifteen hundred Americans there. Directly and indirectly, America's "special relationship" with Israel has also generated unprecedented distrust, fear and loathing of the United States around the world.

In the years to come, the cost of the US alliance with Israel is certain to rise much more. As some Jewish leaders have openly acknowledged, the Iraq war is merely part of a long-range effort to install Israel-friendly regimes across the Middle East. Norman Podhoretz, a prominent Jewish writer and an ardent supporter of Israel, has been for years editor of Commentary, the influential Zionist monthly. In the September 2002 issue he wrote: “The regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil [Iraq, Iran, North Korea]. At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as ‘friends’ of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt ’s Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen.” / 6

Now the world watches anxiously as the danger grows of war with Iran. Israel has threatened to attack Iran if it builds a nuclear reactor, and Iran has vowed to retaliate forcefully against any such assault. The US could easily be drawn into such a conflict, which would be much more destructive than the Iraq war.

There are some who object to the power of the “Jewish lobby” because it supports, or, rather, makes possible, Israel ’s oppression of Palestinians. Others object because they are un*happy with this or that aspect of the lobby’s agenda. But to me this seems beside the point. Apart from the harmful consequences of this or that particular policy enforced by the Jewish lobby is the injustice and danger inherent in permitting any distinct minority group or interest to wield immense, disproportionate power and influence -- and especially in the country that is the world’s foremost military, economic and financial power, and most important cultural factor. Imagine the response, for example, if Mormons, or evangelical Christians, or African-Americans, or the tobacco companies, were to secure a grip on the American media and on America ’s political life comparable to that held by Jews.

In reality, the Jewish hold on American life is far more dangerous than one that, in theory, might be held by any of the other groups I’ve mentioned. There are two main reasons for this:

First, Jews in America have, manifestly, a staunch loyalty to a foreign country, Israel, that since its founding in 1948 has been embroiled in seemingly endless crises and conflicts with its neighbors, and which is now an formidable military power with a large nuclear arsenal.

Second, because of the distrustful and even adversarial way that Jews view the rest of us. This latter remark may seem overstated, so I’ll try to explain.

It is not merely that such great power is wielded by a small minority group, it’s that it is wielded by a group that, more than any other, has a pronounced sense of sep*arateness from the rest of humanity, and which, accordingly, views its interests as quite distinct from those of everyone else. This Us vs. Them attitude, this mindset that sees Jews as dis*tinct from, and superior to, the rest of humanity, is deeply rooted in the Jewish psyche.

It is laid out in the Hebrew scriptures, the Torah, or, as most Christians call it, the Old Testament. / 7 In the book of Deuteronomy, for example, we read: “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth.” Jews or Hebrews are also referred to as a People that Shall Dwell Alone, or, in another translation, as “a people dwelling alone, and not reckoning itself among the nations.” In the book of Exodus, we read of the Jews as a people “distinct... from all other people that are upon the face of the earth.” In another passage, we are told, God says to his chosen people: “This day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you upon the peoples that are under the whole heaven, who shall hear the report of you and shall tremble and be in anguish because of you.”

The ancient Jewish sense of alienation from, and abiding distrust of, non-Jews is also manifest in a remarkable essay published in April 2002 in the Forward, the prominent Jewish community weekly. Entitled “We’re Right, the Whole World’s Wrong,” it is written by Rabbi Dov Fischer, an attorney and a member of the Jewish Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles. Rabbi Fischer is also national vice president of the Zionist Organization of America. / 8 So this essay was not written by an obscure or semi-literate scribbler, but rather by a prominent Jewish community figure. And it did not appear in the some marginal periodical, but rather in what is perhaps the most literate and thoughtful Jewish weekly in America, and certainly one of the most influential.

In his essay, Rabbi Fischer tells readers: “If we Jews are anything, we are a people of history. .... Our history provides the strength to know that we can be right and the whole world wrong.” He goes on:

“We were right, and the whole world was wrong. The Crusades. The blood libels and the Talmud burnings in England and France, leading those nations to expel Jews for centuries. The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition. The ghettos and the Mortara case in Italy. Dreyfus in France. Beilis in Russia and a century’s persecution of Soviet Jewry.

“The Holocaust. Kurt Waldheim in Austria. Each time, Europe stood by silently -- or actively participated in murdering us -- and we alone were right, and the whole world was wrong.

“Today, once again, we alone are right and the whole world is wrong. The Arabs, the Russians, the Africans, the Vatican proffer their aggregated insights into and accumulated knowledge of the ethics of massacre. And the Europeans. Although we appreciate the half-century of West European democracy more than we appreciated the prior millennia of European brutality, we recognize who they are, what they have done -- and what’s what. ...

“We remember that the food they [Europeans] eat is grown from soil fertilized by 2,000 years of Jewish blood they have sprinkled onto it. Atavistic Jew-hatred lingers in the air into which the ashes rose from the crematoria...

“Yes, once again, we are right and the whole world is wrong. It doesn’t change a thing, but after 25 centuries it’s nice to know.”

I can’t resist mentioning that some of the Rabbi’s remarks here are stupefying distortions of history. To speak, as he does, for example, of “a century’s persecution of Soviet Jewry” is a breathtaking falsehood. For one thing, the entire Soviet period lasted 72 years, not 100. And during at least some of that period, above all during the first ten years of the Soviet era, Jews wielded tremendous, if not dominant power in the Bolshevik regime. Or did Rabbi Fischer forget such figures as Leon Trotsky, com*mander in chief of the young Soviet state’s Red Army, Grigori Zinoviev, head of the Communist International, or Yakov Sverdlov, the first Soviet president. / 9

The Rabbi’s essay is noteworthy not so much for his distortions of fact, as it is for what it reveals of the mentality of the man who wrote it, and of the literate Jews who published and read it -- and for what it says about our times.

For example, Fischer pins blame for “the Holocaust” -- that is, for the event that Jews routinely regard as the single most horrible crime in history, collectively on non-Jewish humanity. This view, which has gained wider acceptance in recent decades, represents a drastic re-writing of history. During World War II itself, of course, Jews did not dare say to non-Jewish Americans that they actually shared blame and guilt with “the Nazis” for murdering innocent Jews in Europe. During the war, Jews said just the opposite.

During World War II, and for about some years after, the official story, the “party line,” if you will, was that responsibility and blame for the horrors of the Nazi era lay with Hitler and his “Nazi henchmen.” The official story in those days was that most Europeans -- French, Austrians, Poles, Hungarians, and so forth, and even most Germans – were victims of the evil Nazis. In recent decades the circle of guilt -- the list of perpe*trators -- has grown steadily, so that not merely Hitler, or “the Nazis,” or “the Germans,” but now the French, the Hungarians, Poles, Ukrainians, the Vatican -- in short, all of Europe, indeed all non-Jewish humanity -- is held to be collectively responsible for this allegedly greatest of all human crimes.

The most direct and obvious victims of Jewish-Zionist power are, of course, the Palestinians who live under Israel’s harsh rule. But we Americans are also victims. Through the Jewish-Zionist grip on the media, and the organized Jewish-Zionist corruption of our political system, we are pressured, seduced, cajoled, and deceived into propping up the Jewish state, providing it with billions of dollars yearly and state-of-the-art weaponry, and even sacrificing American lives.

But it is also the truth that we Americans share some responsibility for all this. We have allowed immense power, affecting every aspect of our lives and our future, to be wielded by members of an ethnic-religious minority group who view the American people as fu*ture enemies and potential murderers. Put another way, Americans have permitted people who regard them with profound distrust to play a major role in determining how we live our lives, and in determining our future both as individuals and as a nation. To permit such power to pass into the hands of people who clearly do not have our best interests at heart -- indeed, do not even trust us -- is, to put it mildly, irresponsible.

I want to emphasize here that to deal candidly with the reality of Jewish-Zionist power is not, as some may claim, “anti-Semitism” or “hate.” We do not wish harm to any individual, Jewish or not, because of his or her ancestry, religion or background. At the same time, we should not let smears or malicious accusations, no matter how vehemently expressed, keep us from saying the truth, or doing what is right.

One of the most important centers of Jewish-Zionist power is the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Headquartered in Los Angeles, it reports a membership of more than 300,000 and an annual income of $27 million, including $10 million in taxpayer funds. The Center and its head, Rabbi Marvin Hier, wield considerable political power. According to the Los Angeles Times Magazine, "Hier has accrued unprecedented clout in the Legislature, on Capitol Hill, in the city's boardrooms and even in Hollywood.” / 10 The Center’s imposing “Museum of Tolerance” in West Los Angeles, which presents a relentlessly Jewish-Zionist version of history, reportedly draws 350,000 visitors yearly, including tens of thousands of school children.

Although it claims to promote “tolerance,” the Center’s real agenda is a narrowly Jewish-Zionist one. It is a staunch supporter of Israel and its Jewish supremacist regime. It fervently defends Israel’s policies of oppression, occupation, dispossession, and institutionalized discrimination against non-Jews. The Center supports Israeli policies that violate United Nations Security Council resolutions. It applauds Israel ’s “security fence,” a hideous barrier that is part of a long-term Zionist effort to seize land of non-Jews, and which the International Court of Justice says is illegal.

While the Center denounces violence and terrorism against Jews, it sanctions Zionist terrorism. It has publicly honored two Israeli leaders – Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir – each of whom has a well-documented record as a terrorist.

The Center has a long record of reckless propaganda for war. For years it had been pressing for an American attack against Iraq, backing its warmongering with alarmist claims about the supposed danger posed by the Baghdad regime. As long ago as November 1990, Rabbi Hier was telling readers of a piece he wrote that appeared in Newsweek magazine: “I think the United States should go in. Maybe not tomorrow, but very soon… Three years from now, Iraq will have nuclear weapons.” / 11

In the Spring 1991 issue of its glossy magazine, Response, the Center was claiming that Iraq was killing Iranian prisoners in German-built gas chambers. The Center’s magazine went on to claim that German firms were producing Zyklon B gas in Iraq, "the chemical used by the Germans to murder millions of Jews during the Nazi Holocaust." Iranian prisoners of war, the Center’s magazine said, were being killed with Zyklon B "in gas chambers specially designed for the Iraqis by the German company Rhema Labortechnik… An eyewitness reported the [Iraqi] gas chambers were tiled to look like operating rooms, with a separated observation room for each gas chamber with reinforced glass visibility." / 12

Of course, these fantastic claims had no basis in reality.

In a statement issued in October 2002, several months before the US invasion of Iraq, the Wiesenthal Center insisted that war was necessary because the Saddam Hussein regime had been “continuing to stockpile weapons of mass destruction.” Moreover, the Center went on to assert: “For while there are other tyrants, Saddam alone stands as a menace to world order and stability. While there are others who possess chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, only Saddam has shown an eagerness to use them.” / 13

As the world now knows, these claims were not true.

In the view of Dr. Frank Knopfelmacher, a prominent Australian Jewish scholar, the Wiesenthal Center foments "ethnic hatred.” Australia government officials, he says, should have "banned the members of the Simon Wiesenthal Center from entering Australia and should have deported those who were here.” / 14

Through its Museum, its glossy magazine, Response, and other propaganda materials, the Center relentlessly exploits painful memories of the Holocaust and Jewish suffering during World War II to raise millions of dollars annually. In a book entitled One, by One, by One, author Judith Miller, the New York Times journalist who has been in the news a lot lately, wrote: “The enormous success of the Simon Wiesenthal Center has given new meaning to what was once a macabre in-house joke ... 'There is no business like Shoah business'." / 15 (“Shoah" is the Hebrew term for Holocaust.)

A few years ago, the director of Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust center said: “Rabbi Hier and the Wiesenthal Center are, in my opinion, the most extreme of those who utilize the Holocaust. The Jewish people does many vulgar things, but the Wiesenthal Center [has] raised it to a complete level: The optimum use of sensitive issues in order to raise money…” / 16

The Wiesenthal Center has been a major player in what American Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein calls the “shakedown” campaign by Israel and organized Jewry to extort billions of dollars from European countries and corporations. Finkelstein, author of the bestselling study, The Holocaust Industry, calls the Center “a gang of heartless and immoral crooks, whose hallmark is that they will do anything for a dollar.” / 17

At a time of belt-tightening by California and other states, with money short for schools and highways, it is all the more outrageous that millions of dollars in taxpayer funds go to support this wealthy bastion of Jewish-Zionist power, and its bigoted, self-serving agenda. The Wiesenthal Center deserves the scorn and contempt of every decent person.

And that’s why, on Friday, July 29, we’ll be rallying at the Wiesenthal Center’s offices in Los Angeles to focus attention on the Center’s record of lies in support of war, Zionist oppression and Jewish supremacism, and to protest the giveaway of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to this bulwark of Jewish-Zionist power.

* * * *

A few of those who are here this evening have come, perhaps, out of simple curiosity, or to meet others who are attending. But for most of us, we are here this evening because we care. We care about what is right and wrong. We care about what is true and not true. We care about the past and, more importantly, we care about the future. We care about the world we live in. We feel a sense of responsibility for the world we’ve inherited, and for the world of the future. We want to make a difference – to make this a better world – a world that, even beyond our own lifetimes, is more just and right.

Some of us may feel a special concern for the cause of peace, mindful of the destruction, suffering, and death of war. Some may feel a special concern for justice, perhaps especially for the people who have lived for decades under Zionist occupation. Some of us may feel a special concern for the welfare and future of his or her own culture, race or nation, while others may feel a responsibility for the future of all mankind.

Regardless of the particular causes or principles that most move us, that are closest to our hearts, no issue is of greater urgency than breaking the Jewish-Zionist grip on American political, social and cultural life. As long as this power remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish distortion of history and current affairs, the Jewish-Zionist domination of the US political system, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace.

Throughout history Jews have time and again wielded great power to further group interests that are separate from, and often contrary to, those of the non-Jewish populations among whom they live. This creates an inherently unjust and unstable situation that, as history shows, never endures.

Now we are engaged in a great, global struggle -- in which two distinct and irreconcilable sides confront each other. A struggle that pits a self-assured and diabolical power that feels ordained to rule over others, on one side, and all other nations and societies -- indeed, humanity itself -- on the other.

This struggle is not a new one. It is the latest enactment of a great drama that has played itself out again and again, over centuries, and in many different societies, cultures and historical eras. In the past this drama has played itself out on a local, national, regional, or, sometimes, continental stage. Today this is a global drama, and a global clash.

It is a struggle for the welfare and future not merely of the Middle East, or of America, but a great historical battle for the soul and future of humanity itself. A struggle that calls all of us here this evening – and many more across the country and around the world – who share a sense of responsibility for the future of humankind.

Some of those here this evening have already done much. But so much more still needs to be done. To expose and stand against this insidious power is often difficult and disheartening work, but it is absolutely necessary. During this momentous historical era, we pledge to carry on in this struggle, for the sake not only of our own nation and heritage, but for all humanity.